This morning we are all splitting up a little. Rob and Matt want to get in some more
challenging sections, Clare is going rafting so will be doing some more
challenging water in a safer way, and I’m going to my happy place and horse
riding in the village. There is
potential for me and Clare to join the boys later on but given how tired we all
are we want to make sure Rob and Matt have today at least to tick of a couple
of places on their hit list, that would be too much for us at this stage. The boys drop Clare in Bovec for 9 am to meet
the raft guides at Soca Rafting and head off to get Bunkerji and the gorge
below it that drops in to Zmuklica.
I leave at 8am and take a walk down the road to the riding
stables. When I arrive it’s very quiet
at the yard, the cats come to greet me and all the horses are outside munching
their grass before it gets too hot. I
have a wander round and say hello to all the horses, and I find they also have
some rabbits too! Greta arrives a few
minutes later and we get kit out ready.
She has planned for me to ride her horse Campari and we go and fetch him
in. We are chatting all the time and it’s
lovely for me to be having some ‘horse talk’ while I groom and tack up. She suggests then if I want to do some trot
and canter I can take him in the school for a few minutes at the beginning so
we walk over to the arena and I get on there.
Campari teaches me a little here.
As I’m trying to ask him to canter, and feeling a little bit of a fool,
Greta explains he has been trained in a ‘classical German’ style and will take
canter either from walk or from a collected sitting trot. My back isn’t feeling up to taking a good
collected sitting trot as he has a bouncy stride so I opt for going from
walk. After a couple of tries and a few
hints from Greta we get canter and it’s lovely.
Now that Campari knows what I’m after, and I’ve adjusted my riding to
suit his training a little more, we have a couple more nice transitions and I’m
happy I’ve done enough, and want to get out and appreciate the scenery.
We take a walk then through the trees and out to the river,
where we let Campari have a drink and cool his feet. I let him just go as far as he wishes, it’s
not much fun for me if I’m forcing a horse to do more just so get an experience,
and he seems quite content with that arrangement. We then take the wander back to the yard and
Campari starts ‘singing’ as we go down the track to his home. Greta says he does this when he is happy, it’s
a bit of a grunting breath sound that is in time with his footsteps. We’ve been chatting along the way and Greta
has told me how despite the vast countryside here it is difficult to find many
trails to ride. The government is quite
strict on the use of the land, and you basically need permission to move a
rock. The hacking is therefore limited
to roads and a few tracks that have been laid with hardcore, so the hacking isn’t
very ‘exciting’. It’s fine for me
though. I’ve learnt something new for a
horse trained very differently to mine.
I can tell all the way he really is Greta’s horse, and not just because
she owns him but as we are walking if she has to go behind on a narrow track he
slows down to wait for her and keeps checking behind him with a little flick of
his ears or a turn of his head, and when she is walking alongside he likes to
stay close to her. I feel he is
protecting her as he knows she is pregnant.
After the ride, I sponge Campari down and put him back with
his friend to continue eating his grass, and help Greta put the kit away. She tells me it has been nice for her to have
someone come to ride Campari that knows what they are doing, as it’s good to
see how he responds to the aids from another person. Just because a horse is trained in a certain
way, does not mean he will react to the aids exactly the same from another
person. I say farewell and take the walk
back to the house. I’m feeling grounded
and serene.
Rob and Matt arrive back not long after, full of the tales
of their paddle. They have thoroughly enjoyed
it, but are both feeling a bit tired. I
still haven’t caught up on enough sleep, and being up earlier this morning I’m
tired too. Clare also gets back around
the same time as she got the minibus to drop her off at the house instead of
going all the way back to Bovec, she can pick up her things later. We all decide to give ourselves a bit of a
rest after lunch and reconvene at about 2pm.
Rob and Matt are then going to paddle from Srpenica 1 to
Tronovo 1 and I offer to do the shuttle for them. I drop them off at the put in and head down
to the get out. I find a place in the
shade to park the car, and head over to the camp reception there to check out
the ice cream. Then I head to the beach
to find a spot to sit and wait. I’m not
there long and I see the boys coming down the river. They’ve done it in less than an hour!! They’ve had a great run, Rob says there was
some feisty bits and he was doing lots of bracing and Matt had a roll and
strained his arm a little, nothing serious though and they are both smiling
from ear to ear. Matt and I have a
little swim in the water before we head up and I get us all ice cream while the
boys sort their kit. A thunderstorm is brewing
and clouds are starting to cover the tips of the mountains.
No one has enough energy to paddle again this afternoon and
we are too short on time now anyway so we head back to the house. Clare has been sorting dinner and we sit
around chatting again. I catch up on a
little bit of my blog and I edit some video as it’s taking up a lot of room on
my hard drive to have all the original footage.
Although we haven’t all been together today we’ve all had a nice
day. I do a little pilates session in
the evening to ease some aches and tension setting in, and we are all in bed a
little earlier this evening.
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